Pool
by Payson-Nicky-forever
Summary: After a tragic loss, Nicky Russo helps put Payson Keeler's pieces back together again. /Alphabet Challenge - P/


**Over a year late, but here it is! Before anyone asks, YES!, LCTD and I are continuing the AC, but in a different way. You'll find out in a week or two our newest rules. But I'm doing P and she's doing Q by the original rules.**

**In case you don't remember here's the rules for the original Alphabet Challenge:**

**1) We went through the alphabet writing stories based on a word that begins with each letter.**

**2) Although we both did'A', we started alternating each letter after I did 'B'. Then she did 'C' and so on.**

**3) We always picked each other's word. (Except for the 'A' stories.)**

**4) All stories had to be 500 words in length.**

**5) Five day time limit from when the other author posted her story.**

**6) My stories were always Payson/Nicky and her's were always Kaylie/Nicky**

**Check out the other stories in the Alphabet Challenge:**

**Alone by me**

**Apples by LCTD**

**Barbie by me**

**Carnival by LCTD**

**Dying by me**

**Elope by LCTD**

**Future by me**

**Girlfriend by LCTD**

**Inconvenient by LCTD**

**Jealousy by me**

**Kaylicky by LCTD**

**Liar by me**

**Milkshake by LCTD**

**Ninjas by me**

**Ocean by LCTD**

**IMPORTANT! The first part of this is set 11 years in the future. So when it says "Eight years ago" that's really three years from now**

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><p><strong>Pool<strong>

_Chance is always powerful. Let your hook always be cast;_  
><em>in the pool where you least expect it, there will be fish.<em>  
><em>-Ovid<em>

The stress of life as a gymnastics coach is never ending. From waking up at 4:30 A.M. to traveling around the country recruiting new gymnasts and going to competitions, Nicky Russo and Payson Keeler-Russo have lives that rarely allow time for them to be together with their family, but they no if not for their coaching jobs, they wouldn't have anything together.

Ten years after the 2012 Olympics, Payson was twenty-nine years old, married with a daughter, and a complete workaholic. Many question Payson's complete devotion to restoring the Rock to its former glory, but she made a promise to someone many, many years before that she was determined to keep.

The Rock's fall from grace started out as a gradual thing, with Lauren, Carter, and Kaylie's love triangle making a few national headlines and Emily's job that got her sponsorship revoked causing a bit of a stir, but the Rock as she knew it was no more after the events of the 2010 World Championships.

Not only did the National Champion announce her battle with anorexia at a televised news conference, but a National Team member's pregnancy was leaked to the media. Then a member of the men's National Team was caught kissing _another_ member of the men's National Team. Needless to say, with all the drama and media, the Rock never recovered in the eyes of the gymnastics world. Oh, and then there was the fact that the only gymnast that actually cared about gymnastics completely bombed at the Olympics.

The pain and embarrassment she felt in London still haunts her today. Falling off the beam, _twice_, in the team competition and off the bars in the All-Around was bad enough, but then she had to watch Kelly Parker stand on the center podium watching the Stars and Stripes rise to the rafters. Worst two days of her life.

She was a wreck in the months that followed the Olympics. With her daughter rarely leaving her room, let alone the house, Kim Keeler called in the only reinforcement she could think of: Sasha Belov. The former Olympic gold medalist went to visit Payson on a Monday, and she was coaching at the Rock by the following Wednesday.

Ten years later, Kim Keeler still believes Sasha saved her daughter's life. And Payson agrees.

If only she had been able to save his.

When she first heard about Sasha's death, Payson was at the Rock, wondering where he was. It wasn't like Sasha to be a minute late, let alone two hours, so she was beginning to worry about him. As soon as the police officer walked through the door, she felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. Somehow she just knew.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Keeler, but your fiance was found murdered this morning."

After those first words, Payson zoned out. Later, her mother told her about the police finding Sasha's body in an alley, his watch and wallet gone. The funeral is still a blur to her, bits and pieces of moments strung together in a hazy gray backdrop. After Sasha's death, nothing mattered to Payson except the Rock, the place where they met and fell in love. She felt that she owed it to him to restore his home away from home to a place where Sasha would be proud.

And that's how Nicky Russo came back into her life.

..

Eight years ago

Payson stood at the top of the stairs leading up to her office, her eyes staring at the entrance to the gym but not really seeing it. It was her first day back at the Rock since Sasha's funeral a month before, and she knew she wasn't any where near ready to be back. She nearly had a nervous breakdown in their, _her_, office that morning when she walked in and Sasha's jacket was still draped over his chair.

The janitorial staff had to think she was insane when they walked into the office and saw her sitting in her chair, hugging his jacket tight to her chest and sobbing into her knees. When one of the ladies coughed quietly into her hand, Payson had jumped up and thrown the jacket at her, yelling at them to remove all of Sasha's things. Then twenty minutes later she had come back and screamed at them for not taking anyone else's feelings into consideration in their haste to get rid of Sasha's things and the sadness that they carried.

Sighing quietly to herself, Payson moved her eyes around the gym, watching Claudia beam dismount and Gina's bar routine, and hearing Sasha's voice in her mind critiquing every move the two gymnasts did. _"She's not pointing her toes correctly,"_ he would have said of Claudia. And of Gina, who he had always referred to as the bane of his existence, he would have said, _"If I've told her once, I've told her a thousand times to release a half second sooner."_

Payson looked away from the girls quickly, afraid she would burst into tears in the middle of practice. Instead, she turned on her heel and walked back into the office she had once shared with Sasha. Picking up her cell phone from her desk, she click _Read Now_ on the prompt telling her she had a new text message.

_Payson, be there in 15._

She glanced at the time she received the message and then at the current time. He should have been pulling into the parking lot at any second. Stuffing her phone into her pocket, Payson walked back out to the balcony and down the stairs. Just as she reached the bottom, he walked through the door. His dark brown hair was just as messy as she remembered, though slightly longer than it had been in his gymnastics days. She felt certain that were they standing side by side, the purple-brown bags under his eyes would be an almost exact match to her own. If she wasn't so caught up in her own problems, they would have made her wonder just how tough his post-gymnastics life had been.

Payson stood there in shock for a moment, the reality of what was happening at that moment finally sinking in on her. She was about to replace her dead fiance. Barely a month after he was buried, she had called another man to come and take his place. Guilt crashed over her, and she almost turned and ran back up to her office at that moment. But no, she had to do this. It was time.

Bringing Nicky Russo back into her life was really the only logical solution. She needed someone then that she knew and trusted and that she could count on to not let everything around her fall in shambles.

When his eyes finally found their way to her, Payson stood there and waved stupidly at him. Nicky gave her a soft smile from across the gym before he started to make his way toward her. Payson found herself nervously adjusting her clothes, trying to make herself look presentable and not quite sure why she cared to begin with.

"Thanks for coming," Payson murmured softly.

Nicky smiled at her again, only this time it was more a pitying look. "You want to go up to Sash-" he stopped suddenly, mentally slapping himself as a blush making its way up his neck to his cheeks. "Uh, your office?" he continued.

Payson nodded, but before she moved she turned to him. "You know, I was a little hesitant about this at first," she said. "But I can't do this on my own, Nicky. I just can't. Sasha and I could barely manage the gym ourselves. And I just feel like I'm betraying him by bringing you in, but then I promised him so long ago to that I would help him bring back the Rock. I just don't want to disappoint him," by the end of her little speech Payson was sobbing, and Nicky didn't even think twice about wrapping his arms around her in a hug

And just like that, Payson knew everything was going to be okay.

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><p><strong>Before you ask, know that the word Pool ties in here with the quote at the top. Payson was lost and didn't expect to fall in love, but there Nicky was when she least expected it. I wrote this big, long story, but after I reread it the parts above were all that I decided to keep.<strong>

**No flames, please. I know this isn't my best work.**


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